2022 fWAR to actual wins above replacement (r-squared of .955)
December 4, 2022
2022 fWAR to actual wins above replacement (r-squared of .955)
6 comments
The Griffey vs Trout thread today revealed that there are still some people stuck in the 1990’s who, like Hiroo Onoda, don’t know that the war on WAR has been over for decades.
This post won’t convince them. They don’t understand enough about math to be convinced by math.
But, I ran the numbers for 2022 and measured how many FanGraphs WAR each team was credited with vs how many wins above replacement they actually had.
What you see looks very similar to a straight line.
That’s because the number of FanGraphs wins above replacement is very similar to the number of real life wins above replacement. If a team had, say 40, fWAR, they had about 40 actual wins above replacement.
It’s that simple
WAR measures what it claims to measure. And, no, it is not perfect. But, it is still very, very good. And quite accurate.
This right here is what makes baseball truly fascinating. 🥱
I accept WAR as a useful stat, but your chart doesn’t seem right. Isn’t fwar dependent on the replacement level? If so, how did you prove that the replacement level number is valid?
What player population is in play here?
This is so freaking cool and really demonstrates that fWAR captures so many of the result based metrics that lead to on field success. Do you think the correlation would be improved if you only looked at fWAR during competitive at bats? ie Mookie Betts might not extend a single to a double if the dodgers are up 15-3
Only stat that matters is wins. The more closely a stat correlates to wins (like fWAR) the better metric it can be used to judge a player’s contribution to a winning baseball team.
6 comments
The Griffey vs Trout thread today revealed that there are still some people stuck in the 1990’s who, like Hiroo Onoda, don’t know that the war on WAR has been over for decades.
This post won’t convince them. They don’t understand enough about math to be convinced by math.
But, I ran the numbers for 2022 and measured how many FanGraphs WAR each team was credited with vs how many wins above replacement they actually had.
What you see looks very similar to a straight line.
That’s because the number of FanGraphs wins above replacement is very similar to the number of real life wins above replacement. If a team had, say 40, fWAR, they had about 40 actual wins above replacement.
It’s that simple
WAR measures what it claims to measure. And, no, it is not perfect. But, it is still very, very good. And quite accurate.
This right here is what makes baseball truly fascinating. 🥱
I accept WAR as a useful stat, but your chart doesn’t seem right. Isn’t fwar dependent on the replacement level? If so, how did you prove that the replacement level number is valid?
What player population is in play here?
This is so freaking cool and really demonstrates that fWAR captures so many of the result based metrics that lead to on field success. Do you think the correlation would be improved if you only looked at fWAR during competitive at bats? ie Mookie Betts might not extend a single to a double if the dodgers are up 15-3
Only stat that matters is wins. The more closely a stat correlates to wins (like fWAR) the better metric it can be used to judge a player’s contribution to a winning baseball team.